I honestly think if you want to improve your fighting skills then go with a full contact martial art, with hard training and lots of sparring

Hannibal, I've said as much in a few of my posts here. But purity (in the case of taijiquan) is a hard thing to nail down.

I've talked with Chen stylists who I consider to have the best exposure to what tjq is really all about, but have yet to meet one Chen stylist who will cross hands in full-contact. Maybe it's just where I live, but they all seem to have the answers as long as they don't have to prove them.

As I learned it, tjq is about ideas and levels. 6-harmonies, 5-steps, 8-gates - nothing more and nothing less.

I've had tjq players of various family styles offer their unsolicited critique of my mechanics and form without accounting for the fact that what I practice is tested, so what they see is what I know...not what I think. It means nothing to them that I could induce a serious departure from their own ideology if we were to cross hands. They show me their *proper* form and I'm like, "Yeah, that's a nice demonstration of tjq's ideals, but that aint the way it's gonna happen when a commited, trained fighter puts the screws to you" Of coures, they don't believe me because they won't subject themselves to that kind of pressure-test.

So what I'm left with is levels. I can demonstrate the ideas on one level, and my teacher can demonstrate them on a completely different level. Each level is as valid as the other if a player's intellectual honesty is straight up - knowing what they can do by having tested their understanding of the ideas under pressure.

If you understand 6-harmonies, 5-steps, and 8-gates on that basic, functional level, then I'd say you have enough understanding to instruct/coach others whether they're paying money for it or not.

Originally posted by Hannibal I honestly think if you want to improve your fighting skills then go with a full contact martial art, with hard training and lots of sparring. We all know what those are.

Tai Chi, Taji and other internal martila arts are not the best ones to go to if you want to learn how to fight. If you do it 3 hours a day for 20 years yeah maybe you'll get somewhere. But I don't believe in this " It takes over a lifetime to learn Kung Fu" argument. I don't agree with that line of thinking at all.

I agree and disagree. Theres nothing wrong with training in hard martial arts and sparring etc. But the delema is for how long can your body take it? For obvious reasons everyones body gets old and at a certain point in your life you will never be as good as you are when you were younger. I wouldnt totally dismiss internal arts. At the same time I'm sick of some of the exagerated "esoteric" nonsense alot of internal martial artists are perpetuating. You need sparring and fighting experience to make any art applicable and realistic.